January 28, 2019: Decorah Eagles and Flyway Cam Nestflix!

Tonight’s Nestflix feature the Decorah eagles and a really fascinating video from the Flyway cam. In Decorah, Mom chases a subadult, a subadult chases DM2 (check the video out in slo-mo – it is pretty impressive!), and an attempt at copulation ends when Mom walks away in the middle of it. At the Flyway cam, three coyotes play and one mounts another – although this was a not a serious mating attempt as Janet Kessler of the excellent Coyote Yipps blog explains. We hope you enjoy these videos as much as we did!

Decorah Eagles

1/28/19: Vocals & Sub-Adult & Adult Eagle Chase – https://youtu.be/BxNE3_ITQ-c. DM2 comes into the nest with a subadult video right on his tail at the very beginning of the video! Slo-mo at 4 seconds to see just how close it came! We see it again at 9 seconds (look behind the ‘V’ in the limbs at right before it flies of in front of the nest. DM2 goes into nest defense mode and begins vocalizing. At 1:09, Mom flies in from across the retention pond. We hear her vocals at 1:20. It is cold and snowy right now, which makes stealing prey an attractive prospect…especially since eagles are kleptoparasites to begin with! You can see more of the chase here: https://youtu.be/W7fXz7YcemU. Go to 2:47 for another fly-by followed by some nestorations.

1/28/19: DM2 with squirrel bits, Mom does a flyby – https://youtu.be/H82OCOMnJ3I. There wasn’t much of what I think was red squirrel left – still, I’m not sure why Mom didn’t join DM2 for lunch! Maybe the pesky subadult eagle was still casing N2B?

1/26/19: The “Nookie Walk” at Decorah Eagles – https://youtu.be/8r7b8cg1mxw. So will the eggs be fertilized? Do we think Mom will lay three? Those are two questions we’re getting on Facebook, via email, at Explore, and almost everywhere else! Check this video starting around 5:40. Mom is clearly signaling her receptivity, so DM2 knows he can approach. He’s also getting better at putting his tail in the right place. Still, that didn’t stop Mom from walking away when she decided it was done. Note that she didn’t strike at his or behave aggressively at all. We have roughly a month or a little less to go before eggs, which means they have plenty of time to practice!

Mississippi Flyway Cam

1/26/19: Coyote Conjugals on Mississippi Flyway cam – https://youtu.be/0mk1_yOsZuY. I got really interested in what was happening here, since it didn’t quite look like true conjugals. I emailed Janet Kessler of the excellent Coyote Yipps blog. Here is her response:

“Although there is mounting here, there is no mating. Mating sometimes takes as long as 20 minutes, and the animals actually become “tied” together. What I see here is a male sniffing a female and then a youngster coming over and mounting her but she pushes him off. Youngsters do this, and mothers put up with it.

You might find it interesting that sometimes the females actually APPEAR to mount the males (note: I did, especially since we also see it with eagles!). From what I’ve seen of this, I would say the female is “claiming” the male as her mate. In these three videos below, the female is doing the “jumping on” and “poking” and “almost” mounting. It appears to be about ownership and forming their bond; with a youngster, it would be about an existing bond. I write about this a little in the posting entitled Newcomers.”